In the period at Constantinople, Gregory relied a great deal on the group of monks from his monastery who went with him to keep him company, to hold him as by a cable to the ‘tranquil shores of prayer’, while he was tossed about on the seas of secular affairs. The brothers pressed him – and Leander joined them in this – to interpret the book of Job for them. On a not dissimilar occasion later when Gregory was depressed in the same way by a sense of inward imbalance, a friend put the idea of writing the Dialogues into his mind.

The plan for the commentary on Job perfectly encapsulates the correct balance between inward and outward in exegesis as Gregory saw it. Gregory recognises the need to keep a balance between straining for an allegorical and inward interpretation on the one hand, and forcing a historical interpretation on the other (j: iv, Pref). There must always be a weighing of the reading of the text between literalness and mystery (j: xxi.i.1).

Gregory explains that he was asked to give an account of the text in which history and allegory and also the moral sense would be brought out.